


Wretch

by musiclily88



Series: Firestarter [1]
Category: Little Mix (Band)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, alternate universe shady pines, shady pines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:06:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wretch

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in what we've now deemed the Shady Pines universe. It's tangential to the ongoing fic Little Firestarter.
> 
> I just can't stop writing. I'm so sorry. I don't even know what to say anymore. xx

She finds it strange that different people are living various lives in houses all throughout her neighborhood—houses and lives that have nothing to do with her, full of people she has never met and has maybe only seen in passing. She walks along the pavement most nights, peering in windows her neighbors have left open, shutters askew and blinds up. She learns to catch her breath.

She sees new parents holding babies, looking terrified, or grandparents asleep on the couch. Sometimes she spies siblings fighting over toys or the computer or something else they will eventually deem trivial. She hopes they might learn to appreciate each other, though she has her doubts.

Perrie thinks perhaps she is doing pretty well for herself, all things considered. She recently checked out of Shady Pines, residential care facility for the addicted, depressed, and potentially befuddled.

So she walks. She has a new route nearly every year, in part because her family (made up, these days, of her dad and her brother) moves as often as she herself changes purses. Her dad likes to move, the same way he likes getting promotions at work, and he likes acquiring his beautiful houses. He enjoys picking out unique tiling and expensive wallpaper, but Perrie finds it tiresome. She hates adjusting to a new stove when trying to make a simple pot of soup—she hates trying to figure out how to run yet another shower without scalding herself. The process is tedious.

So she walks. She is not sure how to do much else besides emote, walk, and sleep. She walks around her dad’s various houses and she walks around the neighborhoods surrounding. She walks in a wandering fashion, and she wonders when she’ll feel fine.

She has seen her relatives wither with each visit, seen them stare at her with pity or blank stares or annoyance. She has seen everything under the sun, at this point, and she’s tired. Above all, she is so immensely tired. Her family’s withered and her friends have lagged and so many things have gone by the wayside. Apparently her mental health comes first, though her father is under the impression that addiction isn’t so much a mental illness as it is a character flaw.

Again, she walks. She pretends to clear her mind and she tries to stay sober and she does what she can to remain sane. She walks, and she fights, though the fighting doesn’t always work. Her fight is internal, of course, but it contains multitudes.

Her fight involves self-hatred and hatred toward her ex and hatred for her mother, and to be honest, she kind of hates everyone. She’s been told this is what outpatient therapy is for. She supposes she’ll get around to it someday.

She spots a twenty-something couple pushing a pram, and she plasters on a smile that might as well be a grimace. She hates happiness, and she has no idea when that happened.

As it happens, she also hates herself.

But her body walks its way around the small pond this neighborhood has; her body glances at trees strung up with fairy lights and dogs in kennels and scrubby bushes. She spies it all.

This is as good a use of her time as any. She has nothing but time on her hands, and though her days are meant for recovery, she figures she can traverse her neighborhood a bit. For at least as long as she can call this neighborhood hers, that is. Her father might make it another month without packing up and moving house.

Perrie feels out of step even with herself, wandering around a twilight-darkened collection of houses. People in those houses are living other lives—people in those houses know nothing of her. To them she is _nothing._ They don’t know about her broken bones from climbing trees or her stomach aches soothed with ginger ale in her tiny childhood bed. They have never seen her early in the morning, hair rumpled and face creased from sleeping. To them she may as well just be a solitary figure walking down the street, shoulders hunched like she’s carrying the weight of the world.

She ambles around aimlessly each night, trying to remember a time when she felt a sense of purpose. She thinks it’s been years.


End file.
